Download Religious Scruples in Ancient Warfare

Religious Scruples in Ancient Warfare
Author(s): M. D. Goodman and A. J. Holladay
Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1986), pp. 151-171
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/638951
Accessed: 06/09/2010 13:12
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to The Classical Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
151
Classical Quarterly 36 (i) 151-171 (1986) Printed in Great Britain
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
M. I. Finley in his Politics in the Ancient World(Cambridge, 1983), 92-6 has recently
cast doubt on the extent to which religious phenomena were taken seriously in ancient
times. We believe that in stressing the reasons for scepticism he has overlooked much
positive evidence for the impact of religious scruples on political behaviour and that
in generalising he has undervalued the differences in this respect between ancient
societies. The significanceof some of this positive evidence is admittedly uncertain since
in civilian life scruples might be easy to observe without great suffering.1The acid test
is in time of war, so that is the concern of our present enquiry. That attitudes varied
can be shown only by comparing societies. We have here limited our discussion to
three for which the evidence is well preserved: the world of the Greek city before
Alexander the Great, Rome before Constantine, and the Jews in the Hellenistic and
Roman period.2 Elucidation of the reasons for their distinct attitudes would reveal
much about each of these societies and its religious practices and conceptions, but there
will be space here only to show that considerable variety did indeed exist.
Most ancient peoples assumed that their gods approved of war; the pacifism of some
pre-Constantinian Christians was exceptional. Nor did such rules in combat as were
observed necessarily have a religious foundation. Ancient like modern scruples were
often based on moral and humanitarian grounds, as in the treatment of corpses and
civilians; the gods, as the guardians of general morality, might be involved in such
matters, but only at a remove. Even more apparently blatant religious phenomena
such as omens and auspices were probably seen not as reflexions of divine wishes but
as part of the natural world, of which note should be taken, as with signs of the
In civilianlife, the seriousnesswith whichfeastswereobservedvaried.Some Romansand
(thoughthisis not explicitlyattested)possiblysomeGreekswereappalledat the lazinessof Jews
for havinga weeklyrest(cf. Seneca,De Superstitione,
ap. August.De Civ.Dei 6.11; Tac. Hist.
5.4),but Macrobius(Sat. 1.16.9)nonetheless statesthat Romanreligiousfeaststoo weremeant
to be observedby rest. A fine had to be paid if any Romanwas seen by a priestdoing work
on a rest day. Xenophonclaimsthat no Athenianwoulddreamof doing anythingimportant
on the IHAvvnjpta
(Hell. 1.4.12).Perhapsthe degreeof respectpaid to such occasionswas
sometimesa ratherpersonalmatter,as withChristiandayslikeGood Fridayin WesternEurope
today.Xenophonwas a notablypiousmanand hadan axe to grindin stressingthe importance
Alcibiadesand his friendsobviouslythoughtthat it wouldnot do him any
of the HAvvTr(pLa.
harmto returnon thatdayand,as it turnedout, theywereright.Thepassionsof theHermokopid
on thisoccasion,any morethanin 412/11, althoughthe Eumolpidae
affairwerenot reawakened
and Kerykesraisedobjectionsat first(Thuc.7.53.2).
H. W. Parke,Festivalsof the Athenians(London,1977),190,estimatesthe normalAthenian
attitude at a rather low level. Macrobiushints at a Roman means of avoiding private
inconveniencewhenhe notes that accordingto Scaevolaworkwas permittedwheneverit was
necessaryto avoidloss (Sat. 1.16.11):publicdiesnefastiwereby contrastcarefullyobservedby
the cessationof officialpublicbusiness.AlthoughJewishattitudestowardslabourperformed
on the Sabbathwerealtogetherstricter,they too variedconsiderably,as is easilyseen froma
comparisonof the rabbiniclaws preservedin the Mishnah(Shabbat7.2, and passim)with the
sectariancustomsof the Essenes(cf. Jos. B.J. 2.147).
2 Comparable
scruplesundoubtedlymanifestedthemselvesin otherreligionsandsocieties.For
example,the HittiteKingMursilusII returnedto his capitalin the middleof a warto celebrate
thepurulliyasfestival(0. R. Gurney,TheHittites(Harmondsworth,
1953)152).ButtheGreeks,
Romansand Jewsprovideby far the richestmaterial.
The sectionon Greeceis primarilytheworkof A.J.H.,thaton Romeand theJewsof M.D.G.
I
152
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
weather: but prayers to the gods to send better omens showed a belief that gods could
alter nature within the limits of Fate, although in the meantime it was foolish rather
than impious to ignore the signs. In contrast, portents are often ascribed to
intervention by a particular deity and were probably obeyed for more specifically
religious reasons.
The desire to have the gods on your side in warfare was doubtless always in some
sense a military tactic. Victory was more likely if the favour of a particulardeity could
be ensured either as a result of past connexions, cult and history or through sacrifices
and prayers, the avoidance of hubristic activities and the observance of taboos. Some
exceptionally pious people may have performed their religious duties in war as in peace
from pure motives of love and respect for the deities involved, but the average human
being probably did so for fear of the consequences if he did not. It is however significant
that ancient writers themselves thought they could distinguish between religious and
secular reasons for doing things, since otherwise the use of ~LKatoo6v'qand EdX/ELta
as separate terms would have been meaningless. Plato's Euthyphro shows that the
concept of piety was not entirely clear, but Euthyphro's last definition, that holiness
is the part of the right which has to do with pleasing the divinity (12e: - TErrEpl
r-q'v
was reckonedby Plato not inaccurate(if insufficient),and we
1rV OECv BOEpaTEdav),
shall adopt it here.
Of course in many cases it is impossible to tell whether the religious reasons given
in the sources for particular actions were invented to explain decisions already taken
on other grounds. We have tried to isolate those occasions when the action or inaction
which actually occurred is said to have been dictated by the will of the gods, as revealed
by omens, portents or oracles, even though the participants must have been well aware
at the time that military disaster was a probable result of such piety. We have checked
in each case that no other, non-religious reason can be plausibly surmised for the
behaviour attested. We have paid most attention to the stories of divine interference
which were least likely to have been fabricated after the event, making use of the fact
that all three societies here examined believed that the gods desired a cessation of
military activity on fixed holy and prescribed days. Observance of such taboo days
even when this was tactically detrimental would seem to be a sure sign that religious
scruples were taken seriously.
I. SPARTA
AND THE GREEKS
The holy days and festivals of the Greeks might be celebrated by individual cities, by
ethnic groups (e.g. Dorians or lonians), or by all Greeks. Some truces were merely
designed to avert war in order that the Games or festivals could be celebrated, whereas
other feasts prohibited all kinds of activity as an essential part of the feast itself (as
with the Jewish Sabbath). The situation of the Greeks however differed greatly from
that of the Jews, whose holy days recurredweekly and could not usually be breached
without very severe social and religious consequences. For the Greeks the festival only
occurred annually, biennially or quadrennially, and for a breach of the peace there
was often a prescribed monetary penalty, payment of which, combined with suitable
professions of penitence, could settle the matter (cf. Thuc. 5.49). There was also no
need to observe the festivals wherever you were. The aim was to be there on the spot
and if this was impossible they were ignored.3 The celebration was a public not a
private affair.
3 W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War (California, 1979), iii. 185, notes that he can only
find two instances of any attempt to organise celebration in the field - and of these one is unclear
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
153
On the other hand there were many Greek festivals and the period entailed by some
of them (LEpovqtLaL)was quite lengthy. For example, although the contests in the
Olympic Games only lasted five days, a considerably longer period of time was needed
to enable competitors and spectators to travel safely to and from Olympia.4
The heavy ecclesiastical calendar in the summer months might seem to provide a
serious obstacle to military activity for any pious state, but in fact it was not a very
serious problem in early times, when the nature of Greek warfare was restricted and
almost gentlemanly. Greek states made a practice of attacking each other when the
corn had grown sufficiently to be destructible, but settling the quarrel with a quick
battle and returning home in time to harvest their own crop.5 This would mean that
wars should be over in time for the celebration of the feasts.
However, the Greek states began to find it impossible to maintain this routine when
they came into conflict with Persia or Macedon; even within Greece itself during the
protracted struggles of the Peloponnesian War, the Corinthian War and that between
Sparta and Thebes in the years 379-362 B.C., battles might occur at inconvenient times
whether by accident or malice.
Although no doubt all Greek states would have preferred to respect the festivals if
possible, not all of them were renowned for willingness to sacrifice, or even jeopardise,
their interests in order to do so. We hear of cities which claim a feast as a reason for
inaction, or restricted action, but their motives are often suspect.6
Some states were on occasion positively unscrupulous in the matter of religious
observance - notably Argos. On one occasion she moved the date of a traditional
festival in the hope of deterring a Spartan invasion,7 and on another she 'stopped the
clock' in order to attack an enemy during a festival period.8 Accusations of attacks
in time of local feasts are also levelled against Thebes (at Plataea in 431 B.C.) and Athens
(at Mytilene in 427 B.C.). Phoebidas' attack on the Cadmeia of Thebes during the
Thesmophoria in 382 B.C.was not authorised by Sparta, and later he was punished.9
The Eleian charge against the Spartans for breach of the Olympic truce in 420 B.C.may
be unjustified. It is possible that the Spartans were taking advantage of a technicality
in the timing of the truce, but their logic seems valid and, as has been pointed out,
they also had a political case that might have eliminated the offence altogether.10The
eminent Spartan Lichas, who entered as a competitor in defiance of the Eleian ban,
and the otheris the workof Alexanderthe Great,who was somethingof a law unto himself:
on anotheroccasionhe alteredthe calendarto postponean unluckymonthwhenlaunchinga
campaign(Plut.Alex. 16).
4 For the datesand durationof the variousfestivals,so far as they are known,see H. Popp,
Die Einwirkung von Vorzeichen,Opfern und Festen auf die Kriegfiihrungder Griechenim 5. und
4. Jahrhundertv. Chr. (Erlangen Dissertations, 1957), 75-144.
5 Thuc. 3.15.2; also Mardonius in Hdt. 7.9 (2) and 9.48.
6 E.g. Elis and other states in 480 B.C. (Hdt. 7.206). Their lack of enthusiasm for
fighting north
of the Isthmus in 479 B.C.weakens Popp's case for believing their sincerity (op. cit. 127). Cf.
also Thuc. 5.54.4 and 8.9-10 for other cases.
7 Xen. Hell. 4.7.2.
' Thuc. 5.54.
9 Thuc. 3.3 and 3.56; Xen. Hell. 5.2.29. How far purely local festivals were meant to be
respected by outsiders is not clear.
10 Thuc. 5.49. After the
Olympic truce was proclaimed in Elis there would be a lapse of time
before heralds could proclaim it in other cities of Greece. This was the case in 420 B.C., when
the Spartans were accused of violation and defended themselves by pointing out that the heralds
from Elis had not yet made their proclamation in Sparta and asking why, if a proclamation in
Elis was the relevant, and sufficient, one, the heralds came to proclaim it also in Sparta. They
also could claim that their action was not warlike. See A. Andrewes in A. W. Gomme. H.C. T.
ad loc.
154
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
was, however, clearly flouting the holy law and was punished by scourging on the spot.
But his entry, like all others, was that of a private individual, not a state.11
Interference with the control of shrines and festivals occurs from time to time.
Possibly the Phocians were guilty of some forms of sacrilege during the period when
they controlled Delphi after the mid-450s B.C. Sparta evicted them briefly but the
Athenians restored their control, thus sharing any guilt involved. But we lack details
of this episode.12
On the eve of the Peloponnesian War Corinth suggested that the resources
needed to create and finance a large fleet against Athens might be obtained from
Delphi and Olympia. They spoke euphemistically of loans, but the authorities
there were only custodians of the treasures (which were, in any case, mainly in
non-negotiable form) and were not in the lending business. Pericles uses less
euphemistic language.13 This plan foreshadows the actual events of the next, and
more impious, century.
In 390 B.C. the Argives seized control of the Isthmian Games from Corinth. The
Spartan king Agesilaus took it from them and gave it to some Corinthian exiles, but
when he withdrew the Argives resumed control.14Next came the fighting at Olympia
in 364 B.C.15when some Arcadians drove out the Eleian controllers of the Games and
presided in their place; but in addition they had seized the temple treasures. The
Eleians attempted to regain control when the contests were already in progress, but
failed after showing courage and persistencebeyond their norm. Xenophon was moved
to comment that the God must have inspired them; but they were nevertheless
overborne by the ungodly.16 So a holy war was not guaranteed success.
Some ten years later the Phocians plundered the temple treasures at Delphi in the
Third Sacred War. This ultimately provided the justification for the intervention in
Central Greece of Philip of Macedon, who claimed to champion Apollo. The villains
had already been condemned by the Council of the Amphictyons on other, more
dubious, grounds,17and because of the strength of Philip they were eventually brought
to book and severely punished.18Amongst the few states which supported them were
Athens and Sparta, the latter driven into this unaccustomed situation through her
hatred of Thebes.19Since her great defeat at Leuctra in 371 B.C.Sparta's policy had
been overwhelmingly dictated by this hatred, and her strength was no longer great
enough to enable her to assert and maintain her own principles.
In spite of this lapse Sparta was the one Greek state which held the reputation of
being willing on occasion to sacrificeher own and, often, her allies' interests in fulfilling
her duty to the gods.
The Spartans of course enjoyed a high reputation for piety in many fields.20(Argos'
Thuc. 5.50.
Thuc. 1.112. It was proclaimed as a Sacred War (the Second). When Delphi regained
independence it gave strong support to Sparta (Thuc. 1.118.3).
14
13 Thuc. 1.121 and 143.
Xen. Hell. 4.5.1.
15 In 398 B.C.King Agis of Sparta went to Olympia to offer sacrifice; he had previously been
banned from this, but this time no-one prevented him. In the settlement with Elis which followed,
Sparta did not deprive her of the presidency of the Games, although Pisa was claiming it (Xen.
Hell. 3.2.26 and 31). So Sparta's piety stood up well to strain.
16 Xen. Hell. 7.4.28-32.
17 Diod. 16.23.
18 Dem. 19.25.
19 Paus. 3.10.3.
20 This reputation is endorsed, among contemporary historians, explicitly by Herodotus and
Xenophon, the believers, and implicitly by Thucydides, the sceptic (cf. 5.54). As a conscientious
historian he could not omit oracles and omens when men acted under their influence. See also
Plato, Alc. 2.148d-149c and Cicero, De Div. 1.95.
1
12
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
155
attempt to defend herself by festivals is proof.) They sought to protect Delphi on many
occasions (as during the Second Sacred War and in the first clause of the Peace of
Nicias (Thuc. 5.18.2)) and had always paid great respect to her oracles even when they
ordered her to do unpalatable things.
The expeditions to depose the tyrant Hippias of Athens in 511 and 510 B.C.are such
a case in Herodotus' view, and the arguments for believing that Sparta already desired
so to act are unconvincing. Even when Sparta did wish to go to war she always
consulted the oracle, usually through the special officials known as 'Pythoi': examples
are the war against Tegea c. 580 B.C.,that against Argos c. 494 B.C.and the Persian
invasion of 480 B.C. Others are referred to elsewhere in our text. Similar respect is
shown in civilian matters, as with the Rhetra of Lycurgus (issued with the authority
of Delphi) and other notable events.21
Sparta's observance of omens and portents is also well attested. In 38 years there
are ten known cases of expeditions aborted through earthquakes and bad omens. This
worked to the detriment of her own, and her allies', interests. Even the hard-headed
Thucydides accepted this scrupulousness for a fact and did not attempt to rationalise
it by producing more material explanations, so it is otiose for modern historians to
try to do so. This case has been well argued by H. Popp,22 and it is only proposed
to give a brief summary here.
Other Greek states also took omens and portents into account, of course, but rarely
do we hear of them sacrificingtheir interests as Sparta did. The most notable exception
is the eclipse of the moon which prevented an Athenian retreat from Syracuse,23while
there might still have been some slight hope of escape. It is important to notice that
the reaction to this phenomenon came first from the ranks and not, as one is tempted
to think, from the ultra-religious Nicias. Perhaps the soldiers were thoroughly cowed
by the recent defeats and therefore more prey to superstitious fears. But even at home
in Athens before her great defeat the reaction to the Hermokopid affair had shown
strong superstitious feeling. Certainly we hear little of serious obstruction by omens
and portents to the operations of Greek states other than Sparta.
So far as omens were concerned the most impressive evidence comes from
Xenophon's Anabasis. The author was, by his own profession, a devout believer in
divine signs, and there is no cause for surprise that he should follow them religiously,
in both his public and his private life. (He was also, of course, a great admirer of
Spartan ways and of King Agesilaus.) But he was not the leader of the Ten Thousand,
having declined the position on the direction of the gods.24 Yet he records that the
army was regularlydirected by omens and on one occasion sufferedappalling hardship
from hunger in a siege when the omens, repeatedly taken for four days, would not
approve a sortie.25It is puzzling to know if this was truly typical of Greek armies and,
if so, why there is so little trace in our sources. Naturally, it would only be recorded
if the omens seriously interfered with operations - but in the vast sweep of history
covered by Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon one would have expected this to
have happened many times to other states than Sparta - and two of these writers were
eager to report such things, whilst the third accepted his obligation to do so. Perhaps
21 King Demaratus was deposed at the order of the Pythia even
though he was popular (Hdt.
6.65-7; Paus. 3.4.4). Kings Agesilaus and Pleistoanax were affected by its pronouncements (Xen.
Hell. 8.3.1; Thuc. 5.16). A revealing story about the different attitudes of Sparta and Athens
concerns the murder of the Persian envoys before 490 B.C. The Spartans regretted it and sent
two noblemen as scapegoats to appease the wrath of Talthybius. The Athenians betray no such
scruples.
22 Op. cit. in n. 4.
23 Thuc. 7.42.
24 Xen. Anab. 6.1.24.
25 Xen. Anab. 6.4.19-25.
156
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
some generals kept tighter control over their soothsayers or were more adroit at
concealing, or interpreting, the omens.26
The influence of portents on the Spartans is exemplified in the Persian Wars by the
eclipse of the sun which, according to Herodotus, prevented King Cleombrotus from
attacking the Persian army after Salamis.27But by far the most commonly reported
phenomenon that obstructed their operations was the earthquake. Pausanias noted
this Spartan characteristic28and there are many known examples: we hear of it in 426,
414 and 399 B.C.(Thuc. 3.89.1; 6.95.1; Xen. Hell. 3.2.24). A particularly interesting
case occurred in 388 B.C.,when King Agesipolis invaded the Argolid (after consulting
Zeus and Apollo) and an earthquake occurred. His men were disturbed, but he claimed
that as it had occurred after the invasion, and not before, it need not deter them.
However, as a thunderbolt killed some of his men soon after, they may have doubted
his interpretation and the adequacy of his sacrifice to Poseidon (ibid. 4.7.2-7).
The Spartans were equally meticulous about omens on all occasions - before
starting campaigns, before crossing frontiers, before, and even within, battles. This
appears sensationally at the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C.The Greek army had awaited
battle for ten days because omens were unfavourable for attack,29and even when the
Persians attacked, Pausanias, the Spartan commander, insisted on taking final omens
to authorise engagement and kept his troops exposed to enemy fire whilst sacrifices
were repeated until he got a favourable response (Hdt. 9.62). King Agesilaus exposed
his men to similar danger in Akarnania in 389 B.C.(Xen. Hell. 4.6.9).
Less spectacular, but often very damaging to the Spartans' interests, were the
occasions when they abandoned campaigns at the outset or in mid-course, as in 419
B.C.(twice: Thuc. 5.54.2 and 55.2), in 416 B.C.(ibid. 5.116), and in 396 B.C.(Xen. Hell.
3.4.15).
On all these occasions Sparta's enemies benefited greatly from her scrupulousness.
It is not made clear by our sources whether sacrifies were always repeated in the hope
of more favourable results, but it seems likely, as with Xenophon (cf. n. 24) and the
Spartan commander Derkyllidas in 399 B.C.(Xen. Hell. 2. 1.17). But, if so, they failed,
whereas the latter two were successful. Our sources do not tell us whether later Spartan
leaders ever used again King Cleomenes' method of avoiding bad omens by taking a
different route (Hdt. 6.76). On a rare occasion a Spartan commander, Anaxibios, is
said to have ignored bad omens (cf. n. 26), but the evidence shows clearly the great,
and often dangerous, respect shown by Spartans for portents and omens.
Similarly Sparta is credited with a more scrupulous respect for festivals than other
Greek cities,30 and on occasion she is said to have taken great risks, sometimes at her
26 Greek generalswere empoweredto take decisions,if need be, contraryto the omens
(Pritchett,op. cit. in n. 3, 48-9). We hearof a Spartancommander,Anaxibios,who did so and
suffereddefeat(Xen. Hell.4.8.36).If a Spartancoulddo this we can be surethat otherGreeks
did. Of course,we areunlikelyto be told of this in caseswheregeneralsignoredomensandgot
awaywith it. Generalsmightalso 'edit' omensas the AtheniangeneralThrasyllusdid before
the battleof Arginusae(Diod. 13.97.5-7).The SpartanKingAgesipolis'interpreted'a portent
in 388 B.C.
It is possiblethattheTenThousand,in theirisolationandperil,andwiththepiousXenophon
among them, were very susceptible like the Athenians at Syracuse.
27 Hdt. 9.10.
28 Paus. 3.5.8.
Rationalisations of this delay are common and denounced by Popp (op. cit. n. 4, 49)
29
and Pritchett (op. cit. in n. 3, 78-9). A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks (London, 1962), professes
the same view in general (pp. 262, 508) but deserts his principle in this case.
30 But it should be noted that the Syracusans delayed their pursuit of the
retreating Athenians
in order to celebrate a feast (Thuc. 7.73.2) and the Corinthians also delayed their fleet for the
Games (Thuc. 8.9.1). But in neither case was action urgent.
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
157
allies' expense (and ultimately hers) and in other cases purely at her own. In 388 B.C.
(as already mentioned) Argos tried to avert a Spartan invasion under King Agesipolis
by shifting the normal date of a festival. Agesipolis reacted by going to Olympia to
ask Zeus if he had to respect this phoney truce and was assured that he need not. But
to make absolutely certain he then went to Delphi to ask Apollo if he agreed with
his father.31What he could have done if this time the answer had been affirmative is
unclear, but fortunately for him it was not.
The first instance of scrupulosity concerning local festivals in the historic era32is
at the time of Marathon, in the first Persian invasion of 490 B.C.When the Persians
landed at Marathon the Athenians despatched Pheidippides to Sparta to summon help.
He arrived on the second day after his departure from Athens, but found the Spartans
celebrating a festival. Herodotus says that they did not like to break the established
law but they promised to come as soon as the full moon had arrived, and in fact did
so, sending two thousand men who marched at remarkablespeed, covering about one
hundred and forty miles in three days.33 There is no reason to doubt the Spartans'
sincerity nor to explain their delay by postulating trouble with the helots or the
Arcadians.34 Even though Sparta was unable to take with her any units from her
Peloponnesian allies she was prepared to send a substantial army at great speed. She
probably thought that the Athenians could hold out for long enough, but Marathon
was fought a short time before the Spartan arrival.
When Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C., after a false start at Tempe the Greeks
voted in a council at the Isthmus to fight at Thermopylae, with the fleet at Artemisium.
The Spartans were celebrating the Carneia, and as the Olympic Games were unusually
late this year, these too were in progress.35There is no reason for suspecting that the
Persians in this year, or in 490 and 479 B.C.,timed their attacks to coincide with Greek
festivals: they are unlikely to have known, and certainly did not care. (Herodotus even
represents Xerxes as finding this out after the event.)36But the result was that Sparta
only sent three hundred Spartiates (with helots) and a King, and the Peloponnesians
pleaded the Olympic truce as a reason for sending correspondingly small forces. If
Sparta had thought that a larger force was essential, there might have been problems,
since many of the allies failed to produce troops next year at Plataea, and it is likely
that these were unwilling to fight for Central Greece, as Herodotus suggests
elsewhere." But Sparta was bound by her acceptance of the leadership of the Greeks
to defend the position chosen by the majority at the council, and there is no ground
for doubting her sincerity about the Carneia. Only her optimism should be faulted
as in 490 B.C. As Busolt pointed out, Sparta's willingness to send a Spartiate force
31
Xen. Hell. 4.7.2.
32
The withdrawalof SpartantroopsfromMesseniaundertruceduringwartimein orderto
celebrate the Hyacinthia (Paus. 4.19.4) cannot be confidently treated as historical, though it may
reflect a real event and certainly reflects Greek views of the Spartan pattern of behaviour. Cf.
the real event of 390 B.C.(Xen. Hell. 4.5.11), when, however, no truce was made.
33 Hdt. 6.106 and 120.
34 It would, of course, be quite circular, and therefore illegitimate, to use the Spartan delay
as an argument for the existence of such wars. It is necessary to provide good independent
evidence for them and this has not been done. The Helot War of c. 490 B.C., in which some
believed, has been dealt with by H. T. Wade-Gery in Studies in Ancient Greek Society and
Institutions (Oxford, 1966), 289-302: cf. also GHI, p. 47, no. 22. The coin evidence used by
J. F. Wallace in JHS 74 (1954), 32-5 cannot be dated with sufficient accuracy to prove his case.
It is true that Sparta received no support from her Arcadian allies in her (belated) Marathon
expedition but nor did she from Corinth, Elis and her other allies, by whom no revolt is alleged.
36 Hdt. 8.26.
35 Hdt. 7.206.
37 Hdt. 7.207, 8.40 and 74.
158
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
at all shows a readiness to break the rules at least in a case of extreme need (since
Delphi needed protection and Sparta's oath had to be honoured). She would have
sent more troops (perioeci easily, and even Spartiates) if she had thought it necessary.38
Popp, in dealing with Busolt's point, failed to acknowledge that Sparta demonstrated
by her action that her piety, though remarkable, was not total and suicidal. Pritchett's
belief9 that the obstacle to full-scale Spartan action was a law prohibiting expeditions
leaving before the full moon, but that this was extended by Leonidas' force departing
before the month began, still shows that Sparta could have sent more troops if they
had thought it necessary. A similar problem arises over the events of 479 B.C.
In 479 B.C.when Mardonius re-entered Attica, the Athenians had no doubt hoped
that this would be prevented by Sparta and the allies, but there was no clear obligation
on Sparta to do so if the majority of the free Greeks did not consent. The Athenians
therefore evacuated Attica once more, but sent protests to Sparta, supported by the
Megarians, demanding action. When the envoys arrived, the Spartans were celebrating
the Hyacinthia and told them that they could not act immediately. Herodotus reports
that they thought nothing so important as the service of the God.40 We are told that
the ephors delayed action for ten days but then acted suddenly and sent off in great
haste the largest force that Sparta ever mustered so far as we know.41The size of this
force shows that Spartan delay was not due to fear of Argos, as has been suggested.
The presence of contingents from Mycenae and Tiryns points the same way.42 The
failure of Sparta to act before the Hyacinthia however does need explanation and, as
suggested above, this may have been due to a lack of clear obligation. But Athenian
pressure at last prevailed (even though Herodotus puts their final threat after the first
troops had left).
A remarkable feature of the 480-79 B.C. campaign, which seems to have been
overlooked, is that the Greeks apparently made no objection to providing ships for
continuous service in the fleet even while they were withholding or restricting land
forces on account of the festivals. In the case of Sparta this is largely explicable by
the fact that few Spartiates served with their ships, which were, in any case, few in
number. But this was not true of the other allies, whose ships were manned by citizens;
in the case of Athens in 480 B.C.,by the whole citizen body. This curious phenomenon
persists throughout later wars, the sole apparent exception being the delay of the
Corinthian fleet in 412 B.C. (as already noted) at a time when no urgency seems to
have been felt. Perhaps the explanation lies in the greater difficulty of preparing and
assembling a fleet as compared with a hoplite army, rather than lack of ancient
tradition and religious belief among these sailors.
In the years after the Persian Wars Sparta faced revolts among her allies, but we
and increasedher
31 If Spartahad decidedthat more troops wereneededat Thermopylae,
contingent,she wouldno doubt have pressedher allies to do the same,arguingthat the need
of Greece,and theiroaths, shouldover-rulethe normaltruce,whichwas in any case between
Greeksand had no relevanceto a foreignthreat.If the Persianshad alreadybeen threatening
the IsthmusnothingwouldhavebeensaidabouttheOlympictruce.The Eleiansin 364B.C.were
clearly thought to be right in breaking the truce against violators, since Xenophon credits them
with divine inspiration (cf. n. 16) and even the Arcadians restored their presidency of the Games
(Hell. 7.4.34-5).
39 Op. cit. in n. 3 above, vol. 1, p. 120.
40 Hdt. 9.7.
41 Hdt. 9.8-10.
42 Hdt. 9.28. The departure by night can hardly have been meant to surprisethe Argives (Popp,
op. cit. 112-13) since the dates of the Festival would be known. It must have been a dramatic
gesture.
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
159
do not havedetailsandso cannotknowif herholy dayswerethreatened.Butthe siege
of Ithome after the Helot Revolt of 464 B.C.and of Pylos in 425 B.C.43when she
withdrewher troopsfromAtticamust have kept manysoldiersaway fromfestivals.
The garrisoningof Deceleiain 413 B.C.neednot haveinvolvedmanySpartiates44
any
more than servicewith the fleetin the IranianWar.
But moreseriousproblemsarosein the periodof instabilityfollowingthe Peaceof
Nicias (421 B.C.)when some of Sparta'salliesjoined Argos and Athensin a hostile
alliance. On several occasions the Spartanswithdrewfrom, or failed to begin,
operationsthat wereurgentlyrequiredin orderto save theiralliesand prot6ges.The
causewasusuallytheCarneiaandat leastoncetheoccurrenceof badomensjustbefore
the Carneia,whichdelayedactionuntil the feast was due. This occurredin 419 B.C.
whenthe expeditionto saveEpidaurusfromArgiveattackwas recalled(andsimilarly
a later one, becauseof bad omens) so that one third of Epidaurianterritorywas
ravaged(Thuc.5.54).
In 418 B.C. after their great victory at Mantineia,the Spartansimmediately
celebratedthe Carneia,thus failingto preventtheirenemiesfrom carryingout the
circumvallation
of herally Epidaurus(Thuc.5.75-6). In 417 B.C.,whenheroligarchic
prot6ges in Argos were being threatenedby the democrats,the Spartanswere
celebratingthe Gymnopaediae.Thedemocratshadchosenthis timedeliberately(one
of the few cases of maliceknown)and were able to kill some oligarchsand banish
others.Continuouspressurefrom their long-sufferingfriendseventuallypersuaded
the Spartansto postponethe festivalin orderto act. But when they heardthat the
oligarchshad been defeatedthey returnedhome and celebratedthe festivalafterall
(Thuc. 5.82). It seemsthat the date for this festivalwas less sacrosanctthan for the
Carneiaand Hyacinthia.
In the CorinthianWar the pressurebecamegreater,45becauseSpartawas now
confrontedby a seriouschallengeon land and the threatto her festivalsincreased.
Whileshe was besiegingCorinthin 390 B.C.hercommanderallowedthe Amyclaeans
in the armyto returnto celebratethe Hyacinthia.Xenophonsays 'The Amyclaeans
invariablygo back home to the festivalof the Hyacinthiafor the paean to Apollo,
whetherthey chanceto be on campaignor away from home for any other reason'.
Theywereescorteda certaindistancebut on its returntheescortfell into an Athenian
ambush and was defeatedwith the loss of 250 Spartiates- a very large number
indeed.46Again, this was not a suicidalact, but it involvedgreaterrisk than other
Greekswould have incurredpurelyfor the sake of attendinga festival.
Betweenthe King'sPeaceof 387/6 B.C.and the liberationof the Cadmeiain 379
B.C.Spartawas dominantin the Greekworldand could usuallytimeherexpeditions
for herown convenience.Butwhenthe newsof herdefeatat LeuctrareachedSparta,
we are told by Xenophon,it was the last day of the festivalof the Gymnopaediae,
when the chorus of men was in the theatre.47Spartahad not used the option of
43 Whennewsof the occupationof Pylos in 425 B.C.reachedSpartawe are told that owing
to a festivaltheydelayedaction- but theirmainarmywas alreadyawayin Attica,so it is not
likely to have been a major feast (Thuc. 4.5).
44 The garrison was rotated between Sparta's allies (Thuc. 7.27) but the King was probably
there all the time as Thucydides implies in this passage, and he would need a small force of
Spartiates, possibly the King's Three Hundred (for which see Hdt. 7.205), to provide stiffening
and control.
45 Xen. Hell. 5.29.
46 Xen. Hell. 4.5.11-17. Different details are given in other accounts but none record a smaller
disaster.
47 Xen. Hell. 6.4.16.
6
OCQ
160
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
postponing the festival but had sent her forces out when it was necessary: she was devout
but not to the point of extinction.
II. ROME BEFORE CONSTANTINE
It is often asserted that Rome was more thoroughly militarised than any other ancient
society, and Romans certainly went further than others in ensuring that divine
approval for their wars could almost always be assured: unfavourable portents were
easily expiated and so long as the sacred chickens kept their natural appetites the gods
were reckoned to view aggression with favour. As a result there is no certain evidence
that the observance of religious scruples ever acted to Rome's detriment.48The whole
Roman religious calendar was geared to war.49
None the less, Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16, records days in each year when,
according to Roman pagan custom, it was nefas proelium sumere. His list was culled
from various sources and makes no distinction between different periods of Roman
history, but it includes the days when the Feriae Latinae and the Saturnalia were
celebrated and the three days when the open mundusallowed access to the upper world
by the spirits of the dead, i.e. 24 August, 5 October, and 8 November.so He also states
that it was bad to instigate warfare on the black days (dies atri) which followed the
Kalends, Nones and Ides of every month (postriduani).51These dates are not marked
in the officialfasti for the avoidance of business, although the opening of the mundus
and the unlucky nature of the postriduaniin January are noted in some of the extant
calendars,52but this should not be taken as a reason to dispute Macrobius' evidence.
Plutarch, referringto restrictions on fighting on 18 July, the anniversary of the Roman
defeat at the battle of Allia, further suggests that the strength of pagan Roman
abhorrence at fighting on such days varied with regard to the taboo day in question,
Allia day being one of those itALUara
'A
ro
pdTawv.53
However, observance of such restrictions seems never to have been to Rome's
disadvantage. The truce during the Feriae Latinae presumably originated in the Latin
league, since the festival celebrated the links which bound the Latin cities together
and had much the same rationale as the truces observed among themselves by Greek
states,54but it is unknown whether this truce was ever a problem for Rome in her
struggle for supremacy over the Latins. It may be significant that the Roman consuls
48 On the whole question of Roman attitudes to warfare, see W. V. Harris, War and
Imperialismin RepublicanRome (Oxford, 1979).
49 See, e.g., H. Le Bonniec,'Aspects religieux de la guerre a Rome', in J.-P. Brisson, ed.,
Problkmes de la guerre a Rome (Paris, 1969), 101-3.
50 Macrob. Sat. 1.16.16.
51 Macrob. Sat. 1.16.21, 24. Cf. in general on all these days A. K. Michels, The Calendar of
the Roman Republic (Princeton, 1967), 62-6; A. D. Nock, 'The Roman army and the Roman
religious year', Harvard Theological Review 45 (1952), 190-2. Nock suggests that the
Volcanalia, in early Autumn, should be added to the list.
52 CIL 12 (1893), 296. Most of these days are dies comitiales. It is possible that the Fasti Antiates
mark 6 October as nefastus because this was a black day (see below, n. 58). If so, this was a
mistake, since the otherfasti do not agree. Cf. Michels, op. cit. 66, 133.
53 Plut. Camillus 19.7-8. Michels, op. cit. 25 notes that this day is marked in the Fasti
Antiates Maiores. The ban on all military activity in March implied in Suet. Otho 8 and Tac.
Hist. 1.89 probably refers only to a taboo specific to the Salii; cf. J. P. V. D. Balsdon, 'The Salii
and campaigningin Marchand October',CR 16 (1966), 146-7. See below,p. 164.
54 Dion. Hal. 4.49. See the brief account in W. W. Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period
of the Republic (Oxford, 1899), 95-7; Y. Garlan, transl. Janet Lloyd, War in the Ancient World
(London, 1975), 50-1.
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
161
seem quite early to have gained the right to fix the date of the festival in any particular
year to their own convenience.55 After 338 B.C. the truce presumably became
irrelevant. The festival itself in the later Republic provided some hindrance to warfare
through the normal requirement that both consuls be present at the sacrifices in
person,56 but in times of crisis a dictator Feriarum Latinarum causa could be
appointed.57
In contrast, restrictions on warfare during dies atri will have applied in all the wars
of the late Republic and early Empire. Strikingly, however, the taboo on a particular
day is never mentioned as a reason for not having fought or as an explanation of defeat.
On the contrary, when Lucullus in 69 B.C.was warned by his officers for deliberately
offering battle to Tigranes on 6 October, described by Plutarch as one of the days -rov
a7robpdi8wyva LEAatvas KaAofaetv because it was the anniversary of the defeat at
ts B.C., he is portrayed as proudly
Arausio in 105
replying that he preferred to ignore
the taboo and instead to render the day auspicious by his own victory.58Furthermore,
Plutarch suggests that Lucullus moved rapidly in marching to face Tigranes so that
he was able to attack early in the morning of 6 October, in which case he will have
undertaken the crucial march from Tigranocerta on 5 October, the dread day when
the munduslay open. If so, it is significant that Plutarch sees no reason to comment
on this infringement of another taboo.5"
Roman sources rarelygive precise calendar dates for military manoeuvres but, when
on one occasion a defeat occurred on a forbidden day, it is striking that, despite ample
hostility in the sources against the general involved, infringement of the taboo is not
one of the accusations brought against him. According to Claudius Quadrigarius in
the early first century B.C. the battle of Cannae took place on 2 August 216 B.C.,60
a diespostriduanuson which warfare was forbidden.61 The day was presumably already
taboo at least by the time of Quadrigarius, since otherwise he would not have
mentioned it, and it is very likely that it was one of the dies atri formally recognised
by the Roman religious authorities already at the time of Cannae.62There is indeed
no reason to deny the assertion of later sources that the dies postriduani were first
included among the black days of the state as early as the fourth century B.C.63 At
Cannae the Roman commander Terentius Varro was entirely responsible for choosing
the day for the battle,64and Polybius and Livy provide detailed accounts of the signs
and prodigies which he culpably ignored.65Appian further describes how Aemilius
prevented an attack by Terentius Varro two days earlier precisely by declaring the
55 Cf. A. Alf6ldi, Early Rome and the Latins (Ann Arbor, 1963), 29-34. Alf1ldi's denial of early
Roman control of the rituals need not be accepted.
56 Note the complaints against Flaminius for his failure to carry out the Feriae Latinae before
taking over his command in 217 B.C.(Livy 21.63.5); cf. also Livy 25.12.1-2 about 212 B.C.
57 Alf6ldi, op. cit. 32; CIL 12 (1893), 58.
58 Plut. Lucullus 27.7.
59 Appian, Mithrid. 12.85 gives a different account, but K. Eckhardt, 'Die armenischen
Feldziige des Lukullus', Klio 10 (1910), 96-111, prefers Plutarch's version, which he believes to
be derived from Sallust.
60 Quoted by Macrob. Sat. 1.16.26; Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. 5.17.3-5.
61
Macrob. Sat. 1.16.16. When discussing Cannae at Sat. 1.16.26, Macrobius does not suggest
that the date was unpropitious because it was a dies postriduanus but because it fell four
days
before the Nones.
62 Livy 22.10.6 records the
explicit mention of such days in the words of the people's vow taken
in 217 B.C.
Macrob. Sat. 1.16.22-7; cf. Varro, De L.L. 6.29, and Livy's own comments in Livy 22.10.6.
B. Caven, The Punic Wars (London, 1980), 136.
65 Livy 22.45ff.; Polybius 3.112.
6-2
63
64
162
A. J. HOLLADAY AND M. D. GOODMAN
day ill omened."?It is therefore significant that none of these writers is concerned to
point out the taboo which should have precluded battle on 2 August, although Livy
at least should have known the date from Quadrigarius. It seems that the more
ambiguous portents and omens which preceded the battle were seen as of far greater
religious importance than the unpropitious day.67
According to Frontinus, P. Scipio successfully overcame the reluctance of his
brother to fight on a dies religiosus in 190 B.C.by pointing to the favourable weather
conditions. The great Roman victory of Magnesia ensued. Frontinus approves of this
contravention of religious custom by the Scipios; the fuller accounts of the battle
ignore it.68
In no other case can an infringement of a taboo day be shown so clearly. Perhaps
commanders avoided unpropitious days whenever possible but did not let religious
scruples alter the course of a campaign in any important way, offering suitable vows
to avert the ill omen of an unlucky date in warfare as in religious rites.69When delay
could be detrimental a Roman general could always excuse his breaking of the taboo
by claiming that it was only forbidden to attack, not to defend oneself, on such days.70
Restrictions of this sort became more significant when they applied to individual
commanders rather than the state as a whole. According to Macrobius, some
aristocratic families, including the Claudii, Aemilii, Julii and Cornelii, observed special
festivals as days of rest.71Presumably the work prohibited did not include warfare since
none of these families were hindered in successful military careers. More of a problem
were the taboos attached to some of the priesthoods, which were often shared out in
the Republic among the same nobles as filled the great state magistracies.72Some of
these taboos made political duties difficultand might prejudicethe efficientmanagement
of a campaign.
The most obvious restrictions surrounded the Flamen Dialis,73 who was not
permitted to see armies in battle array or take an oath. Few who held the priesthood
made any attempt at a political or military career. C. Valerius Flaccus reached the
praetorship in 183 B.c.,74 but the senate ensured that this appointment did not
endanger the state by ordering that his provinciabe confined within the city of Rome.75
The election of L. Cornelius Merula as suffect consul in 87 B.c. at the instigation of
Gnaeus Octavius was desired by Octavius precisely because, as Flamen Dialis, Merula
could play no active part in war, leaving Octavius as, in effect, sole consul in the
struggle against the deposed Cinna. Merula's only remarkableact was his pious refusal
66
Appian,Hannib.18.
Florus 1.12.15-22 may refer to the unpropitious day when he states that dux, terra, caelum,
dies, tota verumnatura led to the destruction of the Roman army, but dies here probably refers
to the bad weather.
68 Frontinus, Strat. 4.7.30; cf. Livy 37.37ff. The day concerned was probably the dies
postriduanus 2 May. The battle of Magnesia took place towards the end of December (Julian
date); cf. F. W. Walbank, Philip V of Macedon (Cambridge, 1940), 332. This would correspond
to the end of April or beginning of May according to the current Roman calendar.
69 Cf. Livy 22.20.6 for a deliberate vow that performance of religious rites will not be
invalidated if they occur on a black day.
70 Macrob. Sat. 1.16.20.
71 Macrob. Sat. 1.16.7.
72 For recent discussions, see G. J. Szemler, The Priests of the Roman
Republic: A Study of
Interactions between Priesthoods and Magistracies (Brussels, 1972); A. Wardman, Religion and
Statecraft among the Romans (London, 1982), esp. 17-20.
73 See the list of restrictions in J. Marquardt, Riimische Staatsverwaltung2iii.328ff.
74 Szemler, op. cit. 166-7; T. R. S. Broughton, MRR i.289.
75 Livy 39.45.4.
67
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
163
to sully the tokens of his priesthood when he killed himself on Cinna's return to the
city.76
Restrictions on his political power thus prevented any Flamen Dialis from being in
a position to endanger public security through his personal taboos. However, the
taboos affecting the other flamines, which may in origin have been no less complex
than those of the Flamen Dialis,77did not, by the middle Republic, prevent them from
gaining command of armies. Their sacred duties interfered with their political careers
only when they or a political enemy claimed that they should not be posted outside
Rome because their continual presence for the performance of sacrificeswas essential
for the city's welfare. Such claims were always taken seriously and effectively blighted
the careers of Regillus in 215 B.C.,Q. Fabius Pictor in 189 B.C.and L. Valerius Flaccus,
consul in 131 B.C.,78but the restrictions only applied when the state was in no danger.
The fact that both Pictor and Flaccus were able to fight bitterly, if unsuccessfully, for
the right to a foreign command shows that such commands were not totally
impossible.
The whole notion of such taboos lying dormant until specially invoked by a rival
senator is rather strange. Even odder is the attitude revealed by the career of P. Licinius
Crassus, praetor in 176 B.C.Crassus tried in that year to avoid a command in Nearer
Spain for reasons that are unclear."9He claimed that he was detained in Rome by
the need to carry out regular sacrifices (sacrificiis sollemnibus).80Livy does not record
to which priesthood he belonged, but Crassus' excuse was accepted by the senate and
people after he swore an oath about his religious obligations in front of the assembly.s8
The decisive factor was apparently the priest's own conscience, for when Crassus
became consul in 171 B.C.his colleague failed in an attempt to exclude him from the
glamorous command in Macedonia on the grounds of his behaviour five years earlier.
Crassus' colleague argued that the fixed sacrifices which had required his presence in
Rome when praetor must still need his presence when consul, but the senate chose
to ignore this argument and to allow Crassus to lead the Roman forces against
Perseus.A2It is again probably significant that, although Crassus' campaigns were not
successful, no extant source blames his failure on his dereliction of his sacred tasks.83
Crassus' career shows how Romans could accept appeals by individual politicians
to religious scruples while at other times being unconcerned by disregard of the same
scruples. Approval of the more conscientious attitude is clearest on one occasion when
scrupulous behaviour may have acted to Rome's disadvantage. According to Polybius
the whole Roman army was delayed for a month at the start of the campaign against
Antiochus III in 190 B.C.because Scipio Africanus, who was acting as legate to the
commander, his brother L. Scipio, was required by the taboos which affected him as
a Salian priest outside Rome to remain stationary for the month of March.84 A purely
76
Appian, B.C. 1.65. Cf. Szemler, op. cit. 171; Broughton, MRR ii.52.
77OCD2 s.v. Flamines. Cf. PWRE vi.2486-90 on the gradual relaxation of restrictions.
7 Livy 24.8.10; 37.51.1-7; Cic. Phil. 11.8, 18. In the two latter cases the opposition was led
by the current pontifex maximus but the political motives behind his action are obscure.
79 Harris, op. cit. 37, suggests that Crassus objected to a command in a province too nearly
pacified to leave him an opportunity for glory.
so Livy 41.15.9.
81 Livy 41.15.10; note that Livy records in the same passage an identical oath taken by another
praetor, M. Cornelius.
82 Livy 42.32.1-3.
83 The speaker in Tac. Ann. 3.58 assumes, probably wrongly, that a failure to carry out
statutory sacrifices, rather than any specific taboo, is the only reason for stopping priests from
leaving Rome.
84 Polybius 21.13.10-14; cf. H. H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician (London,
1970), 205. The account in Livy 37.33.6-7 is a confused version of Polybius; cf. Briscoe, ad loc.,
who also comments on the date.
164
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
political explanation for this delay, though possible, is implausible and never suggested
in ancient sources. A rapid push south at this time could have prevented Antiochus'
build-up of forces and brought a speedier victory. The sympathetic attitude of the
ancient writers to Africanus' scrupulosity is therefore due not just to their political
bias but also to a general Roman belief that it was justified to put religious duties above
military expediency in such a case.
This attitude appears all the more remarkable when it is recalled that Africanus'
scrupulous behaviour over his own taboo was followed within two months by the
deliberate infringement of a dies religiosus by the whole army at his insistence (see
above, n. 68 on the battle of Magnesia). Africanus was apparently censured neither
for putting religion above military necessity in the one case nor expediency above
religion in the other. It is a little surprising that such duties of patrician nobles with
Salian priesthoods did not interfere more often in the conduct of war, for, although
resignation seems to have been permitted for Salians unlike other priests when they
took up magistracies,85it was evidently not universal since at least one Salian, Appius
Claudius Pulcher, consul in 143 B.C., achieved military glory while in his priestly
office.86Scipio Africanus, at any rate, was a privatus, and either could not or would
not resign from his Saliate.87Then, for the only recorded time in pagan Roman history,
religious scruples may have acted, however slightly, to the detriment of the state.
When the Empire became Christian, religion did not hinder military activity any
more than it had done before. Some Christians before Constantine were pacifists but
others certainly were not88and there is no trace of any upheaval in Christian thinking
in the years immediately after A.D. 312.89 As in so much else the Church simply gave
a new veneer to earlier Roman attitudes to war. It may, for example, have been normal
for all Christians including Arian barbarians to avoid warfare on Easter Day, since
this is implied by Orosius in his description of the battle of Pollentia of A.D. 402,90
but, if so, the restriction is not known to have acted to Rome's disadvantage in any
campaign, including this one.91
85 Val. Max. 1.1.9 gives an anecdote to this effect about an otherwise unknown L. Furius
Bibaculus, who was praetor and a Salian priest probably in the second century B.C.For imperial
examples, see PWRE s.v. 'Salii'.
86 Broughton, MRR i.436. He celebrated a triumph against the will of the Senate by invoking
the protection of his daughter, who was a vestal. It seems unlikely that such a man will have
broken the taboos of a salius, especially since he took great pride in his expertise at the Salian
dances (Macrob. Sat. 3.14.14.).
87 For a demonstration that Africanus was not a magistrate, see H. H. Scullard, Roman
Politics 220-150 B.C. (Oxford, 1951), 284-5 (Appendix XVI).
88 J. Helgeland, 'Christians and the Roman army from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine',
ANR W II 23.1 (1979), 724-834 denies the influence of pacifist arguments on pre-Constantinian
Christians; L. J. Swift, 'War and the Christian conscience', ibid. pp. 835-68 asserts it. Both
articles have large bibliographies.
89 Helgeland, op. cit. 816.
90
Orosius 7.37.2. Orosius may exaggerate the degree of the sacrilege in his desire to find a
religious justification for the later sack of Rome: admitting that at Pollentia pugnantes vicimus,
he asserts that because Easter had been violated victores victi sumus.
91 It may be significant that Claudian and Prudentius, who wrote full accounts immediately
after the battle, do not mention or try to excuse the date. Cf. Claudian, De Bello Getico 616ff.;
Prudentius, Contra Orationem Symmachi 2.696ff.; Prudentius even asserts (2.745) that hic
Christusnobis Deus adfuit et mera virtus. But perhaps they wanted to avoid embarrassing their
patrons, Honorius and Stilicho.
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
III. JEWS IN THE HELLENISTIC
165
WARFARE
AND ROMAN
PERIODS
Gentile authors ascribed Jewish failures in war to an overscrupulous regard for
religious taboos, even though on the surface the religious aspects of warfare were less
prominent for Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman periods than for their Roman
contemporaries and the Greeks before Alexander.92Early Israelites had waged holy
wars in which God fought on behalf of his people and the defeated enemy was
consecrated to the divinity,93 but by the Hellenistic period such warfare was only
legendary.94War was secularised from the tenth century B.C.: by the end of the seventh
century B.C. Jeremiah could even write of God fighting against Israel for their
chastisement.95 Even if the original concept of the holy war was revived in the
Maccabean struggle of the second century B.C.and in the great revolt against Rome
in the first century A.D.,96 no source claims that those struggles were also due to direct
divine inspiration and intervention. On the contrary, Jews now saw themselves as
fighting for God, to protect his worship, ratherthan God fighting for them as in ancient
times.97
Jewish belief that God's aid in warfare was no longer direct did not preclude hope
for divine guidance through omens and portents. Various methods of foretelling the
future are describedwithout censure in the biblical record of wars under the early kings.
Omens"8 and oracles99 are both recorded, but it was more common in the early
monarchy to enquire about the future directly from prophets,100whose answers were
forthcoming only through direct divine inspiration rather than the technical
interpretation of omens. In the midst of battle commanders therefore depended
heavily on the sanctity and goodwill of such men.101
By Hellenistic times, however, Jewish prophets were no longer regularly to be
found.102 Since no recognised technique had been developed among Jews for inquiring
about omens, Jewish commanders were, when compared to their pagan counterparts,
bereft of divine guidance. Resulting Jewish scepticism about divination before battle
is delightfully illustrated by a story recorded by Hecataeus of Abdera.103 Popular
92
Agatharchides,
ap. Jos. c.Ap. 1.209-11;Strabo,Geog. 16.2.40;Seneca,ap. Augustine,De
Civ. Dei 6.11; Frontinus, Strat. 2.1.17; Plut. De Superstit. 8, pp. 169. Cf. R. De Vaux, Ancient
Israel: its Life and Institutions (London, 1961), 258-67.
93 I Samuel 23.9f.; 30.7f. Cf. M. Hengel, Die Zeloten2 (Leidenand Cologne,1976),277-95.
94 The last holy wars occurred in the reign of David according to De Vaux, op. cit. 265;
in the time of Saul according to Encyclopedia Judaica viii.347.
95 Jeremiah 21.5.
96 Hengel, op. cit. 289-93; cf., e.g., the destruction of the altars in Philistine territory
described in I Maccabees 5.68. Against Hengel's arguments for the revolt against Rome, see
below, note 155.
98 I Samuel 14.9-12.
97 De Vaux, op. cit. 262.
Samuel 23.10-12. God speaks from the ephod through the Urim and Thummim; cf.
99 I
Numbers 27.21; Deuteronomy 33.8. The way this oracle functioned is obscure, but it was in
regular use during the early monarchy; cf. I Samuel 28.6.
100 Ahab in the ninth century B.C. asked the advice of 400 prophets before going to war (I
Kings 22.5-6). Their prophecy was a deliberate ploy by God to entice him to destruction (I Kings
22.20-23).
101 Contrast the prophet who volunteered correct information to Ahab (I Kings 20.13-14, 22,
28) with Elisha's statement to Jehoram that he could refuse to prophesy if he so wished (II Kings
3.13-14).
102 Jos.
c.Ap. 1.41. However, the Hasmonaean John Hyrcanus was so closely in touch with
that he was never ignorant about the future (Jos. B.J. 1.69).
'0 SaLL6VLtov
103 Hecataeus, ap. Jos. c.Ap. 1.201-4. As the seer took the auspices, a Jewish archer shot the
bird he was observing, arguing that if the bird had been gifted with divination it would not have
let itself be killed.
166
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
beliefs about the efficacy of omens were considered by many Jews to be indicative of
a susceptibility to idolatry rather than a readiness to recognise divine advice.104 Instead
of receiving specific guidance like that provided by Roman auspices, the Maccabees
could only study intently the books of the Law (II Maccabees 8.23). Direct divine
communication through the Urim and Thummimwas a phenomenon of the distant
past.105
More general, unsought, portents were more readily recognised as divinely inspired
but, again, the Jewish state lacked professional interpreters. The sacred books
provided few helpful precedents: the sun and moon had stood still for Joshua, but
this was not reckoned as a portent for good or evil but as a divine tactic for ensuring
victory in one day.106 In later biblical times portents of disaster were always and only
understood through the direct inspiration of prophets.'07 The lack of prophets
therefore made portents, like omens, unintelligible in post-biblical Judaism.108os
Jewish religious doctrine was not, then, particularly likely in itself to promote
warfare by the Hellenistic period. By contrast, the problems involved in fighting at
times devoted to divinely ordained rest were more acute for Jews than for Greeks or
Romans.
The most potentially damaging restriction on warfare was the taboo against fighting
during the Sabbatical Year. Once every seven years the land of Israel was allowed to
rest from all forms of agricultural production.109In the description of eschatological
war given in the War Rule found at Qumran, a document which probably dates from
the late first century B.C.or early first century A.D., it is taken for granted that war
too will not take place during such years.'10This restriction on fighting had a dramatic
practical effect on at least one occasion: a siege had to be abandoned by John
Hyrcanus in 135 B.C. because of the onset of the Sabbatical Year.11' Josephus'
chronology of later Sabbatical Years is confused, so it is impossible to be certain that
this taboo was broken on later occasions, 12 but it is not likely to have been kept
scrupulously since attitudes towards even the agricultural restrictions on the Sabbath
Year relaxed during the first century A.D.113 and, in the Pentateuch unlike Josephus,
fighting is not one of the forms of work explicitly forbidden during the year.
104
105
M. D. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132-212 (Totowa, 1983), 208.
Josephus,A.J. 3.218,claimsthatthe oracleceasedonlytwo hundredyearsbeforehis time,
but the Mishnah, Sotah 9.12, dates its end to the last of the first prophets and no consultation
of the oracle is recorded after the Exile (586 B.C.).
106 Joshua 10.10-14.
107Since such inspiration permitted insight into the divine will without the benefit of portents,
these latter are naturally rarely recorded, but cf. Amos 4.6ff.
108Cf. the portents recorded by Jos. B.J. 6.284-315, with a parallel account, presumably from
the same source, in Tac. Hist. 5.13. See the detailed discussion of both passages in P. Fornaro,
Flavio Giuseppe, Tacito e L'Impero (Turin, 1980). On 'false' prophets, see Jos. B.J. 6.285-6.
109 Leviticus 25.4-5; Nehemiah 10.32; Jos. A.J. 14.202.
110 1 QM 2.8-9; G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in
English (Harmondsworth, 1962), 126.
Cf. Y. Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (Oxford,
1962), 20.
11 Jos. A.J. 13.230-5; B.J. 1.59-60.
112 R.
North, 'Maccabean Sabbath Years', Biblica 34 (1953), 501-15. B. Z. Wacholder
(Hebrew Union College Annual 44 (1973), 153ff.) is the most recent author to attempt to
reconstruct the cycle of Sabbatical Years in later antiquity. He concludes (pp. 166ff.) that
Josephus is impossibly confused about the Sabbatical Year which fell around 37 B.C.when Herod
captured Jerusalem (A.J. 14.475; cf. also R. Marcus, Loeb edition, ad loc.). None the less, if his
reconstruction is correct the popular rebellion against the Roman census in the autumn of A.D.
6 took place at the beginning of a Sabbatical Year (Jos. A.J. 18.1-6, 26). Against his dates,
however, see B. Bar-Kochva, The Battles of the Hasmonaeans: The Times of Judas Maccabaeus
113
Goodman,op. cit. (n. 104), 102-3.
(Jerusalem, 1980), 258 (in Hebrew).
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
167
In contrast,thereis no reasonto supposeany generaldiminutionin the observance
of major festivalsduringthis period. It was incumbenton all adult male Jews to
celebrateeachyearthe threepilgrimfestivalsof Passover,Pentecostand Tabernacles
by worshippingat the JerusalemTemple.114Manywho livedfarawayfromJerusalem
went only rarely,but in Judaea the pilgrimagewas sufficientlyobservedeven in
wartimefor most of the populationof Lyddain A.D.66 to go up to the Templefor
the feastof Tabernales.115
Morecrucially,however,restfromworkwas obligatoryfor
all Jews,wherevertheymightbe, on some of thesefestivaldays,and also at the New
Year and on the Day of Atonement.116 Josephusprovidesexplicit evidencethat
marchingto battlecould be consideredone of the formsof work forbiddenon such
days.117It was presumablynot by chancethat Sossiusis said to have capturedthe
Templein 37 B.C.on the Day of Atonement,when the Jewishdefendersmight be
reluctantto fight.118
JosephusexpectedJews who did fight on festivaldays to have
a bad conscience.'11It is howeversignificantthat the one occasion when festival
restrictionsare said actuallyto have preventedJewsfrommarchingto war occurred
in 129B.C.duringthe campaignof AntiochusVII Sidetesagainstthe Parthians,when
John Hyrcanus,to whom invocationof the taboo was accreditedby Nicolaus of
Damascus,was probablyan unwillingally and certainlynot deeply concernedto
achieve victory.120In fact the pilgrim festivals, when great crowds gatheredin
Jerusalem,becamein the firstcenturyA.D.occasionsparticularlyproneto eruptinto
violencedespitethe religiousprohibitionon aggressionon such days.121
The restrictionson Jewishsoldiersmost noticedby gentilewriterswerenot caused
by the SabbaticalYearor the festivalsbut by the morestringentand frequenttaboos
incurredon the Sabbath,whichfell so muchmoreoftenthannon-Jewishholydays.122
Jewishrefusalto fighton Saturdayswas believedby both Jewsand gentilesto have
led at timesto disaster.
It is perhapssurprisingthatit did not alwaysleadto defeat.Accordingto Josephus,
followingI Maccabees,Jewshad declinedto takeany partin warfareon the Sabbath
until a massacreof Maccabeanpartisansin the mid-160sB.c. led to a changein the
law so that 'to this day we fight ' 7orE •E-qaLE'.123Josephusdefinesthis last phrase
elsewhereas an occasionwhenthe othersidehas begunthe battle.'24Modernscholars
havealmostall acceptedthis account,pointing,as evidencefor the relaxationof the
tabooin thesecondcenturyB.C.,to Pompey'ssiegeof Jerusalem,whenhe wasopposed
wheneverhe attackedthecitydirectlyon the Sabbathbutwasleftundisturbedto build
Deuteronomy16.1-16.
Jos. B.J. 2.515-16.Thoseleft behindweremassacredby CestiusGallus.On the extentto
which the pilgrimagewas observed,see J.Jeremias,Jerusalemin the Timeof Jesus(London,
1969),58-84.
116 Leviticus
23.7-8, 21, 28-32, 35-6. Observationof such rest days outside Jerusalemis
attestedat Elephantineas earlyas the fifthcenturyB.C.;cf. J. B. Segal, TheHebrewPassover
114
115
from the Earliest Times to A.D. 70 (London, 1963), 224.
117 Jos. A.J. 13.252.
118 Jos. A.J. 14.487.Philo, De Spec. Leg. 1.186testifiesto the zeal with which the
Day of
Atonement was universally observed.
119Jos. B.J. 2.515, 517.
120
Jos. A.J. 13.252.See T. Rajak,'Roman interventionin a Seleucidsiegeof Jerusalem?',
GRBS 22 (1981), 72; M. Pucci, 'Jewish-Parthian relations in Josephus', The JerusalemCathedra
2 (1983), 13-16.
121 E. M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule (Leiden,1976),146, 163, 166,264.
122 See the authors quoted above, n. 92.
123
Jos. A.J. 12.277.
124
Jos. A.J. 14.63-4.
168
A. J. HOLLADAY AND M. D. GOODMAN
up siege works on the sacred day.125To explain Jewish aggression on Saturdays during
the first revolt against Rome it is usually assumed that, under pressure of the war,
Jews widened the definition of defensive warfare to permit combat in any campaign
already under way.126
Reliance on Josephus' picture is, however, not satisfactory. Josephus seems to be
mistaken both in asserting that there was a total ban on Sabbath warfare before the
Maccabees and in claiming a generallyrecognised change in the law under their regime.
The arguments against the existence of a total ban before the Maccabees have
recently been forcefully presented by B. Bar-Kochva.127 Jews served as mercenaries
in Persian and Hellenistic armies and must have fought on Saturdays, but there is no
evidence that they were censured for this behaviour. According to the Book of
Nehemiah, the pious exiles who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon worked for
fifty-two days to rebuild the city's fortifications, while guards watched over them day
and night.128Admittedly Agatharchides, quoted by Josephus, claims that Jewish
superstition was revealed by the lack of resistance to Ptolemy in 302 B.c. when he seized
Jerusalem on a Saturday, but he may be mocking not their refusal to fight but their
foolishness in remaining unarmed because they did not believe that Ptolemy, who had
entered the city to offer sacrifice at the Temple, had any hostile intentions.129Nor need
I Maccabees 2.29-41, which describes how Jewish troops attacked by soldiers of
Antiochus Epiphanes submitted to massacre on the Sabbath, assume a Sabbath ban:
the hasidim may have argued for the piety of martyrdom on any day of the week,
showing concern for the Sabbath only because the enemy had explicitly challenged
them to die for their religious beliefs, of which one prime example was Sabbath rest.'30
For the author or epitomator of II Maccabees the piety of the Jews is a major element
of the tragic history, so his emphasis on the Sabbath as a factor in warfare should
be treated with caution when other reasons for the course of events can either be
posited from the general situation or gleaned from I Maccabees.'13 The ruses used by
Ptolemy or by Apollonius, who came to Jerusalem 'pretending peace' (II Maccabees
5.25), would have been unnecessary if anyway no opposition could be expected on
the Sabbath day.'32
Josephus is equally mistaken in asserting a general acceptance of the piety of
defensive warfare on Sabbaths after the Maccabean uprising. The Book of Jubilees,
probably composed during or immediately after the Maccabean wars,133still forbade
all warlike activities on the Sabbath,134 and the Qumran sect, which took Jubilees to
be authoritative, was similarly strict.135Nor was this attitude confined to obscure sects.
Josephus puts into the mouth of Agrippa II in A.D. 66 the statement that the Jewish
125Jos. A.J. 14.63; B.J. 1.146.
126
For the clearestexpressionof this view, see M. D. Herr,'The problemof war on the
Sabbathin the SecondTempleandthe Talmudicperiods',Tarbiz36 (1961),248ff.(in Hebrew).
in the rest of this paragraphare his.
127 Op. cit. (n. 112),331-42. The arguments
12s On mercenaries, see especially A. Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Tel
Aviv, 1978), 46-53 (in Hebrew); on the building of the walls, cf. Nehemiah 4.3, 12, 15-17; 6.15;
Bar-Kochva, op. cit. 333, 429.
129Jos. c.Ap. 1.209-11; for the narrative of events, see A.J. 12.5-6.
130
I Maccabees 2.29-37; II Maccabees 6.11.
131
II Maccabees 5.25-6; 8.25-8; 15.1-5; cf. the detailed discussion by Bar-Kochva, op. cit.
336-41.
132
Bar-Kochva, op. cit. 336-7.
133
G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literaturebetweenthe Bible and the Mishnah(London 1981),
78-9.
134
Jubilees50.12-13.
135
Nickelsburg, op. cit. 79; De Vaux, op. cit. (n. 92), 483.
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
169
rebels were bound to fail in the fight against Rome since they had a choice of either
being defeated because of their refusal to take any action on the Sabbath or alienating
God by deliberately failing to serve him as required.136 It will not do to dismiss this
speech as 'mere demagogy';137 if either the original audience of the oration or the
readership of the Bellum knew that this religious rule did not apply, the passage would
not serve Josephus' literary purpose. According to Josephus, when a scout during the
Jewish revolt against the Parthians in Nehardea in the mid-first century A.D.reported
to the Jewish commander Asinaeus that they were cut off by Parthian troops, the scout
assumed that they were bound to surrender td TO KarTElpyEUOatL poayopEVrEL
7rov
IamrptlovEl9 TOapyEtv, and Asinaeus' decision to fight was a purely personal one and
not the upholding of a new legal principle in preference to an old one.'38 John of
Gischala is made by Josephus to claim to Titus in A.D. 67 that on the Sabbath it is
Frontinus, writing under Domitian, claimed that Vesp&7TAa KLVEEV... aE.tLToV.139
asian won a victory over the Jews by cleverly attacking on the Sabbath day 'on which
it is nefas for them to do any business'.'40 Josephus himself justifies the dismissal of
his own troops in Tarichaeae in A.D. 67 by the fact that it was impossible for them
to bear arms against Tiberias on a Saturday KaV?LEya TLrt
70E TE'tELV
VaYKIT SOKq.141
Attempts have been made to explain away these contradictions either by trying to
discredit the testimony in Josephus and Frontinus about the continuation of scruples
into the first century A.D.142or by adducing from the rabbinic laws in the Tosefta a
prohibition against carrying arms on the Sabbath even when in danger and by
distinguishing between that prohibition and a generally held belief that self-defence
was permissible.143This latter explanation is possible, but it is implausible not least
because the Tosefta was redacted to its present form only in the third century A.D.144
It seems preferable to accept that there existed a genuine uncertainty about the
correct way to keep the Sabbath in wartime. Such uncertainty is not surprising.
Josephus attributes the alleged change in attitude to fighting on Saturdays to
Mattathias, the rebel leader: he taught ('8183aKE) that self-defence was justified.'45
But Mattathias was only a humble priest, and the penalty for infringement of the
Sabbath by an individual was to be cut off from the community.146 No individual or
institution in Judaism before A.D. 70, and probably for some time afterwards, had
undisputed authority to change law in this way. Indeed, study of the Dead Sea Scrolls
has emphasised that attitudes towards and interpretations of the Pentateuchal Law
within the Jewish community from the Persian to the early Roman periods were
1' Jos. B.J. 2.391-4.
137
138
M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Jerusalem, 1974), i.511.
140
Frontinus, Strat. 2.1.17.
Jos. Vita 161; B.J. 2.634.
Jos.A.J. 18.322-3.It couldperhapsbearguedthatAsinaeuswasignorantof Jewishcustom
in Palestine.
139 Jos. B.J. 4.99; Tituswas Josephus'patronand will haveknownif the
storywas true.
141
142 Frontinus'
evidenceis rarelytakenseriously(see, e.g. Stern,op. cit. (n. 137),i.510-11)on
the groundsthat (1) Titus,not Vespasian,conqueredJerusalemand (2) othersourcesmakeno
allusion to Sabbath observance as an obstacle to Jewish success in the revolt of A.D. 66-73. But
Frontinus does not mention the siege of Jerusalem and the incident to which he refers may have
been earlier in the war; the silence of the other sources is explicable if the Jews did fight, but
fought badly (see below), especially since Frontinus does not himself say that they did not fight,
only that they lost; and Frontinus, writing when and where he did, ought to have known.
Herr, op. cit. (n. 126), 248, 254, with reference to Tosefta, Erubin4 (3). 6 (Lieberman text).
143
See Goodman, op. cit. (n. 104), 9, for the proper use of the Tosefta for social history.
'44
145 Jos. A.J. 12.276; cf. I Maccabees 2.40.
146 Exodus 31.14; 35.2; Numbers 15.32.6.
170
A. J. HOLLADAY
AND M. D. GOODMAN
remarkable for their diversity.147The picture of a steadily evolving system of
interpretation, fostered by later rabbis to gain acceptance of their own views as the
last in a long line of tradition, was first drawn up only in the second century A.D.and
is misleading for the first century.148
As a result, Jews in the first century A.D. could be certain only of the undisputed
piety of allowing yourself to be killed for refusing to fight on the Sabbath."149They
knew that some Jews believed that the law was not broken by fighting in self-defence
on the day of rest, but how to decide in practice when a battle was brEp roVi
is impossible without further guidelines. Later rabbinic texts claim that
aaaros150
the
early-first-centuryA.D. Pharisee Shammai gave some such guidance, interpreting
defensive warfare widely to permit offensive operations so long as they had begun at
least three days before the Sabbath,151 but this definition was not accepted even by
Josephus, although he describes himself as a Pharisee, and there is no reason to believe
that it was widely influential.152For most Jews it seemed best to escape the problem
by avoiding warfare altogether, and by the first century A.D.Jews were no longer often
found as mercenaries or in Roman military service.153
However, when the great revolt against Rome broke out in A.D. 66 and Jews were
forced to fight, many of them deliberately attacked the enemy on Sabbaths.154There
is no evidence that they justified this behaviour by asserting that the holy aims of the
war now justified abrogation of the taboo.155They presumably just hoped that their
lenient interpretation of defensive warfare would be acceptable to God. They could
not, of course, be certain, and it can be assumed that nagging doubts about possible
guilt made them less effective as soldiers. In the end they had no answer to Josephus'
assertion that their eventual defeat was due not least to rat irpoS gNov at'cEl'atg.s156
It is unknown how long this ambivalence towards fighting on the Sabbath had been
prevalent among Jews. No ancient text takes Joshua to task for marching for seven
days around Jericho. But it may be relevant that examination of the Babylonian
chronological dates reveals that the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the
147 See, e.g. M. E. Stone, Scriptures, Sects and Visions (Oxford, 1982).
148 J. Neusner, Rabbinic Traditionsabout the Pharisees before 70, 3 parts (Leiden, 1970).
Jos. c.Ap. 1.212, where the issue is presented starkly.
Jos. B.J. 1.146.
151 Sifre to Deuteronomy 203-4 (ed. Finkelstein); Tosefta, Erubin4 (3), 7 (Lieberman text).
152 Jos. Vita 12; note that Josephus' own definition at A.J. 14.63-4 contradicts Shammai's.
The suggestion by H. Graetz, Geschichteder Juden III 25 (1905), 799, that Jewish fighters in the
revolt against Rome relied on Shammai's dictum to clear their consciences is pure surmise.
153 J. Juster, Les Juifs dans rEmpire romain (Paris, 1914), ii.265-79 argues that Jewish soldiers
were not rare in the Roman period, but see the more cautious approach of J. N. Sevenster, The
Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World (Leiden, 1975), 154-6. Observance of the
Sabbath was the reason given by Dolabella for permitting exemptions for Jews from Roman
military service (Jos. A.J. 14.226), but S. Applebaum, 'Jews in the Roman army', in Roman
Frontier Studies, 1967.: The Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress held at Tel Aviv
(Tel Aviv, 1971), 181, stresses Jewish objections to the ruler cult and other pagan religious acts
required of Roman soldiers.
Jos. B.J. 2.450, 456, 517; both priests (B.J. 2.409-10, 453) and the wider Jerusalem mob
154
(B.J. 2.517) broke the Sabbath in this way.
155 The view proposed by Hengel, op. cit. (n. 93), 293-6, that the breaking of the Sabbath
taboo shows the Jewish Revolt to have been a holy war, founders on the considerable general
evidence that the revolt was not inspired by religion. For some secular reasons for the rebellion,
see M. D. Goodman, 'The First Jewish Revolt: social conflict and the problem of debt', Journal
of Jewish Studies 33 (1982), 417-27.
'56 Jos. B.J. 7.260.
149
150
RELIGIOUS
SCRUPLES
IN ANCIENT
WARFARE
171
beginning of the second siege by the same king, and the final capitulation of the city
in 587 B.C. all took place on Saturdays.157Religious scruples taken seriously could
have serious consequences.
University of Birmingham
Trinity College, Oxford
M. D. GOODMAN
A. J. HOLLADAY
157 A. F. Johns,'The militarystrategyof Sabbathattackson the Jews', VetusTestamentum
13 (1963),482-6.